The Martyrdom of St. Spike

Directed by Spike Lee. Written by James McBride, based on his novel. With Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonzo, Omar Benson Miller, Valentina Cervi and Matteo Sciabordi. (R)

This spring there was a bit of a dust-up in Cannes when Spike Lee complained that there were no black soldiers in Clint Eastwood’s Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. Eastwood responded by pointing out that although there were black soldiers at Iwo Jima, the soldiers who raised the flag in the famous photograph on which his films were based were not. The occasion for Lee’s comment was the premiere of his own WWII picture, Miracle at St. Anna, and a weaker rebuke to Eastwood could not be imagined.

First off, Miracle at St. Anna is not based on a true story, but a novel by James McBride (The Color of Water), inspired by his uncle’s reminiscences about the war and a true incident, the massacre of 560 Italian civilians in 1944. In McBride’s hodgepodge, more “what if” than what was, four soldiers in the all-black 92nd Infantry Division, known as the “Buffalo Soldiers,” wind up behind enemy lines in the mountains of Tuscany, where gentle giant Sam Train (Omar Benson Miller) rescues a little boy (Matteo Sciabordi). Seeking medical attention for the child, the soldiers visit the home of an Italian family with whom they find they have more in common than they thought.

In parallel flashbacks, we see the soldiers being refused service in a Louisiana ice cream parlor and the Italians being mowed down by the Germans. Because that’s the same thing, right?

Train has the same profile as the villagers’ mythical protector, a mountain they call “The Sleeping Man,” and he carries with him a 450-year-old piece of statue from a bridge in Florence, a head that has magical powers. The head turns up in a Macy’s bag in 1983 in a framing story that is played as broad farce.

Tonally at odds with the rest of the movie, it seems to exist merely to give Lee regulars such as John Turturro something to do; John Leguizamo’s one scene as a dealer in Nazi art seems particularly superfluous. As with Axis Sally’s endless race-baiting radio broadcast, Lee’s self-indulgences keeps derailing the story, such as it is. The real story of the 92nd Infantry has yet to be told. Maybe Clint Eastwood will get around to it — after he’s finished his film about Nelson Mandela.